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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Merry Marvel Movie Society just keeps marching right along. The countdown clock for Iron Man 2 is down to under a month, and already our eyes are on the horizon for what's next. Thor is now filming under the helm of Kenneth Branagh, with Chris Hemsworth in the title role, and Joe Johnston's Captain America, starring Chris Evans, follows suit shortly, with both projects aiming for a summer '11 release.

All three are exciting enough on their own, but today came word on the big magilla, The Avengers, with Joss Whedon, writer, director, occasional comic scribe and longtime fanboy fave, tapped by Marvel to call the shots on the highly-anticipated flick that will team its most iconic heroes. Previously, Whedon was attached to helm DC Comics' Wonder Woman feature for Warners, but when creative differences with producer Joel Silver led to that project dropping back to square one, DC's loss became Marvel's gain.

Of course, the Buffy and Angel creator's history with the comic giant dates back even further, when he penned an early draft of what eventually became Bryan Singer's first X-Men (FYI, the one line of Whedon's that survived to the final cut, much to his chagrin, is Halle Berry's "I wonder what happens when a Toad gets hit by lightning?" near the end). Ironically, the skeleton of the crappy third X-Men flick also comes from Whedon's work, this time the Astonishing X-Men comic from '04/'05.

Although he's demonstrated plenty of ensemble-based mythology-building experience in the past, both with the Buffy/Angel-verse, and the gone-too-soon Firefly (along with its big screen sequel Serenity), the Avengers turn is an unusual one for Whedon in that just five years ago he strenuously denied he was the man for the job. Clearly Marvel disagreed (and rightfully so). While packing so many larger-than-life characters (along with their respective alter and actor egos) into one movie might seem overwhelming, I can think of no one better equipped to do the characters and their world justice.